Falling off and Bouncing Back onto the Wagon.

After 120 days of near sparkiness perfection I fell off the wagon. Actually I did a Esther Williams style swan dive of joy off the wagon! I saw it coming, decided that I was going to indulge in everything and anything to my heart's content. To tell you the truth I was a little excited to see what I would do with that much leash.

My best friend and I both live alone. I work from home and she is retired. Just before covid hit, she was widowed so her isolation is more intense for her than anyone I know. She rarely sees another human being. I have taken to driving to the next county to see her every other Saturday. We take a walk together then spend hours and hours chatting in her garden from socially spaced rocking chairs. We have camped together every year for over 20 years except for this one. So this time I was coming to spend the night in her little upstairs furnished apartment that she no longer rents out. We walked. We split a bottle of wine. We ate (far too many) good-for-you high protein homemade oatmeal cookies. We lit a fire in her firering and chatted into the night eating chili and drinking heated chocolate almond milk with Baileys. In the morning there was oatmeal, toast with blueberry jam, scrambled eggs and potatoes, lots of fresh fruit and espresso in the garden again. Later we ate unbreaded buffalo chicken nuggets and celery while listening to the Packer game, again in the back yard. We spent 36 hours together all of it outside except for sleeping and both agreed it was absolutely the best day of all of 2020. I measured nothing. I logged nothing. I did not get in the way of everything my inner little girl wanted to eat.



(this is us on our walk in our matching masks she made us)

But honestly, after 120 days of eating clean and learning about eating healthy I did learn quite a bit.

1. The foods I overeat on are much different than those I used to gorge on. No chips, no ice cream, not even chocolate. When I looked at what I had overeaten I was pretty impressed by how, overall, they were mostly carbohydrates and protein. So even though I wish I might have eaten a little less, almost everything I ate had a good store of nutrients.

2. By the end of the game I experienced "uncomfortably full" for the first time in a long time but instead of being shamed or angry with myself, I tried to picture the satiation scale I've seen lately and thought "ah this is definitely an 8, maybe even a 9". It was all very rational and didn't start an avelanch of self-loathing.



3. Oddly I didn't worry about Saturday and Sunday after they happened but rather about when I would get up on Monday. Would this be the beginning of the end? What if all my 4 months of working on me for me was for naught? I didn't worry but I did plan. Monday was going to be my long run day. Would I actually carry through? So to help me get around in the morning, I went to bed Sunday night in my running clothes. When I got up all I would have to do is put on my shoes to be all set.

4. This morning I got up dressed to go running. I weighed myself and had "somehow" gained 3.3 pounds. I am sure some of that is because of all the extra salt I got this weekend but whatcha gonna do besides shrug, smile, and and love my body anyway? I decided that I would just look at it as if I "carbed up" the night before a race and get out there. I am happy to report that despite the fact that I woke up feeling pregnant with a food baby, I ran my fastest 5k this year!!!

So lots learned by this onetime sorta-planned experiment. I don't regret it. I don't plan on repeating it anytime soon but as we decided at one point around the fire sipping hot chocolate, Perfection is logging absolutely everything 350 days a year!